Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT?

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The cover story in the latest US News and World Report showers the following pearls of wisdom on job-hunting readers:

Instead of teaching in a public school, teach in a private school because it’s easier and there’s less “bureaucracy.”

If you want to be a school psychologist, the best kind to be is the one who deals with gifted students.

Running a non-profit is way less satisfying than just racking up a fortune in the private sector and then making charitable contributions, because in the non-profit sector you have to deal with volunteers who can be unreliable.

What adds insult to injury is the magazine’s claim that they came to these conclusions after taking into account the sense of meaning and purpose people want out of their jobs. Makes you wonder which people they’re talking about.

INSERT SARCASTIC COMMENT ABOUT COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM HERE

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John McCain says he’s against our government spending money on making condoms available in Africa – he thinks:

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Keep this one in mind next time someone tells you that Democrats lose elections because they’re simply outside of the mainstream on “social issues.”

POSITIVE PEACE

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In a discussion thread at the New Haven Independent, one of the anti-union posters is invoking Martin Luther King and calling for “a peaceful solution.”

Fortunately, there’s a peaceful solution the Yale – New Haven Hospital could agree to tomorrow: card-check neutrality. Let’s keep in mind it was MLK who warned us against seeking “a negative peace which is the absence of tension” rather than “a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” He also said: “You see, no labor is really menial unless you’re not getting adequate wages…if you’re getting a good wage, as I know that through some unions they’ve brought it up…that isn’t menial labor. What makes it menial is the income, the wages.”

He wrote the first quote in jail in Birmingham. He said the second one at a rally for SEIU 1199 – his “favorite union” – in 1968.

MY DAD IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Check it out:

Previously, this administration viewed the American people and Congress as supportive, or ignorant, or easily bullied into submission. Moving forward, however, the White House may increasingly perceive us as a threatening obstruction or as part of the enemy itself.

So, as the president and his team circle the wagons ever more tightly, giving greater power to the few loyalists remaining within, we must be even more alert to potential new transgressions against the law and against the will of the people. In short, we should remember that in the wild there are few creatures more dangerous than a wounded bear.

More of him here.

Just remember, Dad: We were your friends before you were a star.

TASTELESS, GODLESS, ETC.

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Amidst heaping scorn on the American people for neither being persuaded by right-wing prescriptions for keeping us safe nor willing to follow them on faith, Jim Geraghty chooses a strange example

Think about it – the Taliban tried to assassinate Cheney yesterday. Could you imagine if that had occurred in 2002? The snarky too-bad-they-missed comments on Huffington Post would be considered too tasteless for public comment.

Funny thing is, they are considered too tasteless for public comment. That’s why our right-wing friends trolling about for examples of lefties wishing death on Dick were stuck settling for anonymous comments on the HuffingtonPost.

Truth is, wishing death on Dick Cheney isn’t the kind of thing you can do and still be praised by people running for president. Not all Republicans are so lucky – just ask John Paul Stevens.

THE DIGNITY OF YOUTH

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I’m no fan of hipsterdom (it says a lot that it takes preppy-ism to make hipsterdom look goood, sort of like it takes feudalism to make laissez-faire capitalism look good). But this David Brooks column railing against hipster parents who dress their kids in hipster outfits is just silly (makes John Tierney look good – almost). To read Brooks, you’d think that the hipsters were the first and only parents to impose their particular culture on their children. Everybody else must just dress their kids in what they’d be wearing in the state of nature, right? What with all the sneering about the counterculture’s dupes, he never quite gets around to specifying what that should be – just that it has something to do with “the dignity of youth.”

I’ll take a baby T-shirt that says “My Mom’s Blog Is Better Than Your Mom’s Blog” over one with a big Nike swoosh any day.

"SORRY TO ANYONE I HAVE OFFENDED"

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My Dad can vouch that I don’t know much about professional sports. But I doubt I’m the only one scratching my head at what’s supposed to be meant by Tim Hardaway’s apology for his assertions that

I hate gay people. I let it be known I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States sports.

After being clued in to the potential negative consequences of open bigotry for his endorsement deals, Hardaway said Thursday that

As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause. I regret and apologize for the statements that I made that have certainly caused the same kinds of feelings and reactions. I especially apologize to my fans, friends and family in Miami and Chicago. I am committed to examining my feelings and will recognize, appreciate and respect the differences among people in our society. I regret any embarrassment I have caused the league on the eve of one of their greatest annual events.

Hardaway seems to be conveniently obliterating the distinction between feelings and beliefs. Nice to know he’s examining his feelings, but what of his belief that gay people have no place in professional sports or in the world? He doesn’t want to cause people negative feelings. He wishes he hadn’t voiced views that could inspire negative feelings. He plans to “appreciate…differences among people in our society.” Does that mean that gay people have a place in society, where he just said they didn’t? What about the locker room, where he said he doesn’t “think [Amaechi] should be”?

If he’s actually recanting – and not just regretting – his pronouncement that “I am homophobic,” why not say it? And if – setting his feelings aside – his beliefs about gay people stand and he’s just “sorry to anyone I have offended”, why bother with a weasely apology at all?

I don’t know a thing about sports journalism, but it would seem to me the obvious follow-up question should be: Is there a place for gay people in the world? In the locker room?

WHOSE UNITY?

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Christopher Hayes on Obama’s announcement:

In his speech, Obama recited moments in American history when politics became something more than the mundane mechanics of governing and effected a true transformation of the polity: the civil war, the New Deal, the civil rights movement. But the problem is that those were moments not of unity, but of extreme polarization. The South only granted rights to black citizens under force of arms, armies of unruly war veterans gathered in Washington DC during the Great Depression to demand the government provide them with a safety net, and when Martin Luther King Jr went marching through the South, he was met with batons and firehoses and accusations that he was dividing people and stirring up trouble.

THEY DON’T DO THAT, DO THEY?

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Can anyone offer me an example of a staffer for a right-wing presidential candidate resigning in response to a campaign waged by a relatively low profile left-wing organization whose claims of offense on behalf of a large chunk of the population were repeated loudly and uncritically by the mainstream media without any substantive investigation into the nature of the organization?

For that matter, can anyone think up a scenario in which such a thing credibly could take place?

Can you see a Mitt Romney staffer leaving as a casualty of a campaign to off him by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund? What are the chances such a campaign would even make it into the New York Times? And if it did, wouldn’t it be in an article full of right-wing Mexicans bashing MALDEF as a Democratic Party organ?